I'm going to get straight to the point. Our film is progressing fairly well. We have all of the music loaded into iMovie and our rough cut finished, as well as all the footage we need. The only problem is that it's about 45 seconds too long, so we definitely need to cut it down. We haven't had any notable challenges, or any out-of-the-ordinary successes. I think that we're getting work done, but there's still a lot to do.
This week, I went in after school and finished the rough cut. I also helped to adjust the music that we already have in the movie and helped add the appropriate effects.
For this upcoming week, we need to finish fine-tuning everything and add in the voiceovers. I think we definitely will be able to get that done and I hope to get an A (or B) so that we can show it at CAP Hollywood, which I'm pretty excited about.
And just to entertain you a bit, here's the song that inspired our film and which we're using in it.
For my group's CAP Hollywood project, we're making a short film about a guy trapped in a metaphorical hole. It's not really a hole, it's more like Groundhog Day or something, where the guy has to get up in the same way, eat the same things, and do the same routine over and over and on and on for infinity. He keeps trying to escape, but with no luck. He starts seeing monsters and creepy things, and he gets chased through the woods, only to come to a cliff. It ends when he realizes that the only way for him to leave the hole is to kill himself by jumping off of the cliff. Or something to that effect.
I think our film is going really well. We've had a few challenges because we had to change the location from a house to a tent in the woods, so we're having to rethink a lot of minor details, but we've managed to work everything out. We're almost done filming, with just a few more scenes to shoot.
This week, we filmed the majority of our project and got a lot of editing done. Specifcally, we created a roughcut and then fine-tuned the opening sequence, found music and sound effects, and done a few voice overs from the beginning.
The next step of our filming process will be to shoot the nighttime scenes and the scenes that we're changing a little bit, as well as our last scene. Then we'll need to start editing them.
I'm pleased with our efforts so far and I think that we have an optimistic-looking future for our project. I can't wait to see all the finished films. I'm really excited.
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On a side note, to all, say, five people who read my blog regularly, I'm going to do a more interesting post next weekend, most likely. I've been really busy with makeup work because I'm sick and shows and things, but all of that is slowing down. So yeah! In the mean time, enjoy this academic tidbit and I'll see you (metaphorically, like the hole), next week!
In media this week, we had to make a 90-second video about life in Takoma Park or Silver Spring. I don't really do any interesting activities or go any intersting places, so I just decided to have a quick montage of all the great Takoma Park-y things, like rooster and the Co-op. Then, I decided it was too boring, so I added some music that I think perfectly captures the mood. I hope you enjoy it.
I filmed it on my sister's digital camera, my own digital camera, and my dad's flip camera.
Because December 21, 2012 is drawing closer, I decided to watch the 2008 NOVA documentary about ancient Mayan heiroglyphs, Cracking the Maya Code.
The film follows the discovery of ancient Mayan writing and how scientists have gradually managed to decipher the hieroplyphs more and more. Mayans used to be spread out all over South and Central America with their own unique and complex culture, mythology, and writing system, but the Spanish invaded their cities and destroyed all except 5 of their book, converted them to Catholicism, made them speak Spanish, etc. The Maya abandoned their cities and all but died out. Then in 1774, Jose Calderon found their temples and the writing that was in them. Soon, scientists and archaeologists began coming to the lost cities to learn about Mayan Culture and decipher the heiroglyphs. In 1810, a man named Constantine Rafinesque found copies of an ancient Mayan text and was able to figure out their number system. Scientists made a little progress in dating some Mayan monuments, but not much. An archaeologist named J. Eric Thompson then was able to chart all the Mayan Glyphs and tried to figure out what kind of language system it was. He deciphered a few signs, but eventually determined that most Mayan symbols were just pictures and had little meaning. Several scientists since then have been able to disprove that, discovering that the pictures could tell stories, could represent whole words, names, or just syllables. Being able to read the glyphs had a huge impact on modern Mayan culture, and Mayans are now able to learn firsthand the ways of their people that have been lost for centuries. It included several interviews with prominent scientists including David Stuart, Michael Coe, and Linda Schele.
This documentary did a very good job of clearly getting its message across with good use of point of view and characters, as well as sticking to the well-defined goal.
There were a few reenactments, all of which had realistic props, costumes, and actors.
The cinematography was very good. The different shots were well put together and relatively simple and easy to understand. There were several real pictures from the time period, all of which were helpful. When complex or somewhat illegible glyphs were shown, they would be outlined or highlighted in a way that made them clearer using special effects. This made it even easier to understand what was being said.
I really enjoyed this documentary. Although it isn't as well-known or life-changing as some documentaries, it was very informative and really fascinating. It was really cool to follow the development of scientists's understanding of an entirely new language and culture. It's so interesting to think that this complex culture would be lost forever had scientists been unable to crack their code. It was also cool to see how happy it made the Mayans of today to know that they could read, speak, and follow many of the same customs as their ancestors.
If you'd like to watch it, which I highly recommend, it is available on the NOVA website, on Netflix, and, of course, here:
We've been really busy in media these last couple of weeks. So here's a brief rundown of two projects that we've done!
First, we worked on our dystoipian trailers, which we just finished. As I mentioned before, our group's trailer was called "Barcode". A full summary for it is here under The word Barcode. It also has a link to the video, but I'll embed it in this post a the end as well.
This was a pretty fun project. I had a lot of fun filming, making props, and acting. I got to make the really creepy masks that we used. We got some strange looks, but they turned out awesome. There were a few roadbumps along the process. For one thing, we were going to film at the Silver Spring library, but the librarian at the front desk told us that we couldn't film in a government building. This turned out to be false, but we found another place where we could film that actually turned out better.
Another problem was that my group's schedules were really uncooperative. We only got in one or two filming sessions together, so we had to film some of it by ourselves. This turned out fine as well.
Actually, we had a lot of little problems with music, clips, and voice overs, but we managed to pull together and really do a good job. I'm proud of it.
After the trailers, we were assigned a quick independent video assignment called Capture the Fall. We had to edit together at least 10 clips and use transitions and music to create a film about what the fall means to us. I decided to make mine have a story. I was just going to film my sister raking a bunch of leaves and then jumping into them, but then she started to dance around, and I decided to use that in my project. She did really well, skipping and waltzing around, and I got it all on camera.
The movie was essentially about a little girl who goes outside and spends a really long time raking leaves, which is just as fun as actually jumping in them.
The only problem was that we decided to film this at around 5 or 5:30, and after a little bit, the sun started to go down. At first, it was okay, but the last few shots are in complete darkness, except for one lone lamppost. But that was okay too, because the early nights are another of my favorite parts of fall (along with leaves, of course) and it also sort of made it seem that my sister had been raking leaves for a comically long time.
I used my little point and shoot digital camera for this project, an iMovie to edit. At first, when I edited everything together, the time was about 2 minutes and 50 seconds. I edited it down to a minute, but when I added in the transitions, it messed up the lengths a little. Now, it's more or less a minute (plus title and credit slides).
The music that I used I got off of freesound.org. I think it makes the video more light and playful.
Overall, this was also a fun project. I would have changed my shooting time, but otherwise, it went well.
Yeah, I know, we're really cool. And by we, I mean Samantha, Martha, Milena and I. On a completely unrelated note, I learned how to link text! Pretty cool, huh? I think it adds infinite meaning to this post.
What? Oh, right, the assignment!
Our dystopian trailer is called Barcode, and it's about a society where people have to wear paper bags over their heads and use pre-written cards to communicate so that they can all be equal and they can't express themselves. They also wear earpieces so that they can't hear anything except their leader's voice. Their names are barcodes, which further limits any inkling of individuality. Hence the title. Yup. I can hear you thinking, "Of course, Sarah. You are brilliant!" Yeah, that's right. I can hear your thoughts. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Sorry, everyone, I'm feeling exceptionally schizophrenic today. I should know better, especially now that actual people are reading these blogs. So hello to all my new and adoring fans! Congratulations for finding this blog! I'm sure reading it was a constructive use of your time.
But again, I digress.
I'm in charge of scriptwrting, which is going okay. We're using dramatic text slides and actual scenes from the movie to tell the story, so no voiceover. We have the concept and the characters down, but our main problem is the plot. We know we want the main character to somehow try to overthrow the government and take a stand, but what we have so far is sort of similar to a lot dystopian movies and pretty generic.
So far, we have seventeen scenes. The scenes at the beginning are pretty short and layered on top of eachother, but as the action gets more intense, the scenes are longer and more complete. It starts out more or less a montage of the premise of our society, and then shows longer scenes of the catylist and main rising events. Towards the end, the story switches between the protagonist trying to infiltrate the leader's office and her trying to take over the broadcasting system so she can contact the general public. The final scene shows her taking off her mask in between shots of the crowd, of the leader, of her enjoying being individual, etc.
The script is still subject to change, if we hit a problem during production or if it's not clear, but this is what we have now. I'm really excited about production, because I'm going to be the main protagonist and it'll be fun to act that out. My only fear is that we won't have enough time to finish shooting, but I think we'll pull through. This is CAP, after all.
Fun fact: The pizza that we made actually fell off the thing in the oven that it's supposed to cook on and burned. Then, we tried to make another one, but that one wasn't cooking fast enough, so we put it in the microwave and burned that, too. And so I spent my Friday night cleaning up burnt pizza from the oven and making pasta. I know, I know. I'm awesome.
But I digress.
This project was pretty easy for me. I used my (admittedly very cheap) point and shoot digital camera to film and iMovie to edit. Once I decided what to make this project about, it was simple to film and edit.
I think this turned out okay- the only problem is that my washing machine is on in the background, and at least, to me, it's kind of annoying. And, of course, we couldn't use a clip of the pizza being eaten because of reasons explained above, but I had the clip of washing hands, so there were enough scenes. As far as the actual action and things, I'm pretty pleased with it.
For the next independent video challenge
We could have to film a few shots of motion so that it is all one movement, for example, a car drives through the frame from left to right and then the next shot is of a person running as though picking up from where the car left off, and then maybe a ball rolling across the frame, and so one. I'm pretty sure that didn't make much sense, but I don't really have a better way to explain it. A thousand apologies.
Hey y'all!Yes, I said y'all. And you can't do a thing about it. The article I read for this assignment was called "Preparing Students to Learn Without Us," by Will Richardson. It described self-directed learning and how it can work its way into the classrooms. What it came down to was this; self-directed learning is the student finding their own way to meet the school's set goals, where they can learn about what they want and learn it the way they want to learn it, and teachers can play a big role in bringing this about and guiding the students through the process. One quote that stuck out at me from the article was this:"The ability to learn what we want, when we want, with whomever we want as long as we have access creates a huge push against a system of education steeped in time-and-place learning." Self-directed learning will be difficult to institute in most schools because it is so out-of-the-box and unorthodox; however, sometimes, breaking tradition is necessary for important change. Overall, I think self-directed learning, like socialism and bacon chocolate, is a fantastic idea in theory, but it will be extremely difficult to make it work in reality. Students may take advantage of the lax structure and do absolutely nothing, and some children may not get where they need to be in the appointed guidelines; however, I think the principals of self-directed learning are important, since each child has his or her own learning styles. Structure is important, but too much structure can make things oppressive and boring. In our class, I think that sticking to the curriculum with one or two self-directed learning projects on the side is a good compromise, and one that could be effective for this year.One of the problems that I have with self-directed learning is that it would and will be very difficult for me to choose a topic, but I think I might be interested in the actual editing of video, since I know very little about htat. I would also be interested in the history and evolution of film-making. Diigo annotated page link: http://diigo.com/0sy20 (This post's formatting might be a little strange, but I can't figure out how to fix it. I apologize wholeheartedly)
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Hello again!
Welcome to post numero deux of this utterly delightful CAP blog.
I read the movie review 'Beasts': Taking Southern Folklore To The Next Level by David Edelstein on the NPR website. It was about Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild. This review starts off with a basic description of the overall movie, and then a more detailed synopsis of the plot. Throughout the summary, which discusses the literary aspects of the film, Edelstein alludes to the other aspects of film. For example, he mentions the "catch-as-catch-can" style of the hand-held camera while describing the chaotic personality of Hushpuppy's, the main character's, father. By far, however, he covers the literary aspects of the film much more than the other two.
After Edelstein gets the descriptions of the movie over with, he criticizes the almost amateurish style of the shots as well as the insistent underscoring music, but evens it out by praising the powerful performance of Quvezhane Wallis as Hushpuppy.
The review ends with a description of one of the more powerful scenes of the movie and ties it to the theme.
I think we should use this basic model for our class reviews, with an introduction, summary, the author's opinion, and conclusion; however, I feel it is very important for us to have some freedom as well. A basic, flexible outline would most likely be best for this assignment.
The link to the article with annotations: http://diigo.com/0su9d
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Salutations. I'm Sarah. This is my CAP blog.
It doesn't get much more exciting or interesting than this.
Here are things about me: I'm a sophomore at Blair.I like the color green. And purple. I like to read books, especially Agatha Christie's Poirot and other murder mysteries. I like dinosaurs. I hate people. I act. I'm not good at talking about myself. The end.
The main aspect of filmmaking that I'm interested in is the scriptwriting and acting part. Mostly the acting part. I enjoy acting. The other parts are sort of confusing to me.
My only experience with media is the Photography class we took last year. It wasn't my favorite class, but it had its fun moments. One of my favorite projects we did last year was the infoflow show open we did last year, which was fun because we could pretty much do anything. Me and my partner created a script about a spy whose mission was to find all the letters of the word "Infoflow", and used the Mission Impossible theme song to make it dramatic. I was the spy who had to find all the letters. It was fun to shoot and pretty easy to edit.
Another project I enjoyed was the live news project. Basically, we wrote and shot an entire live news show. I learned a lot about live TV and operating all the complicated equipment. My favorite part about that project (besides being a news anchor) was operating the switchboard, because I got to press a lot of buttons, which, if you ask any three-year-old child, is awesome.
We can use these blogs to:
Help our change project by announcing upcoming events related to what we're doing
Help teachers assess how well we're learning through our reflections on projects we do
This is a picture of a movie slate. I chose it because I like acting, and I think it can also represent the return to high school- sort of like, "Year 2, take 1. action!"
